Snapshop before my antipodean hiatus

Its been another frenzied weekend of activity in the garden. Actually, it was such a lovely day on Friday (Irish weather: Think hen's teeth) so I took the day off and set my last lot of seeds: corn, mangetout, jalapeno, hungarian peppers, gourds, butternut pumpkin (from a grocery-bought fruit), green pumpkin and some helianthus seeds (found on the tram tracks - the ones the birds didn't want). With the new home-made greenhouse, there's plenty of space for these additions, though I am keep a munch indoors on the window sill for "insurance" purposes.

I embarked on some guerilla gardening in next-doors front yard to use up the remaining seed potatoes and found a bag of onion sets I'd overlooked and so whacked those in around the edges of garden beds.

I found a bunch of seeds from the early nineties in Michael's mum's old shed when visiting Clonmel a fortnight ago, so he has set about testing their viability. So far its been at least partly successful - not bad for seeds almost 20 years old (see the handing basket below). Also, he started chopping into the bamboo in the back corner of the property and has provided me with a fantastic supply of stakes and framing material!

So the rest of this blog catalogues each garden bed under tillage as of 25 April: as I will retake each photo when I return from the antipodes to see what a month's spring sun can achieve. I've also included a shot of the foul English ivy strangling the lovely ash out front (and steal precious light from our frontal sections) to see how much further it has declined since I snipped off all its life-support trunks (with glee). Also, the clematis vine running up the balustrade of the front steps is in bloom and looks great.

So its bon voyage for a month!